


For This Cause Into This Hour

by SinOfPride



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 23:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinOfPride/pseuds/SinOfPride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tag to 'Lazarus Rising'. When Dean wakes up, he can't breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For This Cause Into This Hour

**Author's Note:**

> The episode in 3 steps.

.I.

When Dean wakes up, he can't breathe. 

He's supposed to be dead, but he's choking and his throat feels raw and his chest feels tight and his ribs are pressing into his lungs and it feels like he's dying all over again. When Dean wakes up, he remembers dying and, somehow, he knows he's woken up in his own tomb. When Dean wakes up, he screams with no voice and claws at the wood over his head with blunt nails that start bleeding before the full blunt of panic even hits. He wakes and before he can even think, he's desperately hitting the coffin he's locked inside of, realizes seconds before it happens that the soil will collapse over his head. 

Dean's breathing in earth and worms and he thinks he would be crying if there were any water in his body, thinks he would be sobbing if he could only _breathe_.

When Dean wakes up, he's alone, he remembers dying and he has to claw his way out of his own grave. When Dean wakes up he thinks maybe this is hell, maybe this will be his eternity, forever struggling against dying in a body that just won't seem to stop, cloaked in terror and grief, cloaked in silence and darkness, choking on earth and forever clawing, clawing his way out of a pit that doesn't seem to want to free him. 

Then he's out. His hands break free and he drags himself out even if everything in his body hurts, a throbbing agony in every muscle. The sun is above his head and there's air in his lungs and he's safe, for a second, just a second of relief. 

Then he remembers the hellhounds and he remembers Sam and he remembers dying and vague screams in his head that tell him: hell. He's supposed to be in hell. Then he looks up into a circle of destruction. He looks up and sees that he's alone, he's awake, alive, alone. Sam is not here, and he thinks, this is hell. He thinks this is hell as he heaves himself up and finds only his shadow. His shadow and wooden cross with no name on it, and there's nothing else.

The cross offers him no answers. 

So Dean starts walking to search for them himself, thinking, this _is_ hell. This loneliness, this silence, this not knowing, this not having, this not living, this not dying. He walks and he thinks _please_ , but there's no one, there's nothing to hear him plead. 

There never has been.

 

.II.

Not hell.

Bobby. Sammy. Alive, if not well, happy to see him, to have him back ( _at least Bobby was, he's sure of that much, he's sure of nothing else_ ). Relieved, like they've been released of a burden and Dean doesn't know how to say _Wait_ , doesn't know how to ask them _What am I doing here?_ , isn't sure if his terror isn't showing through the cracks or if they're willfully buying his worn and cracked game-face.

This is no game. He's died a thousand times only to return, always to come back to the start, always five steps back from when he started.

When Dean died, Sammy was crushed and terrified but he was Sammy. Now Sam looked at him right in the eyes and said _Once I realized I couldn't save you_ and Dean wanted to ask him _You'd given up?_ , wanted to tell him _I was sure you'd done it_ , wanted to whisper _I thought you'd have found the way_. 

But Sam hadn't. Sam had been sleeping with someone who left her things all over the room like that awkward talk with that woman had been just another lie. Sam had replaced him and had been hunting for revenge like their father once had, no hope of happiness, no hope of fixing anything for the better.

Sam had barely touched him since they first hugged, had barely looked at him since telling him _That was practically your dying wish_ with such sincerity that Dean's chest hurt. Because Sam had wanted to give in when Dean was a minute away from his death and then Dean had been gone four months and nothing Sam did helped and Dean wasn't stupid.

Dean knew his wishes had never been horses and he had never ridden anywhere but towards another battle, another loss. 

Dean knew four months had been enough for Sam to find his footing, like he'd always wanted, his independence that he'd always sought and Dean couldn't grasp him anymore, couldn't hold him back, no matter how much Sam needed it.

Dean had thought his hell would be an eternity of lonely suffering. An eternity of a certainty of failure.

He'd been right.

 

.III.

Castiel touched him. 

_An angel from the Lord_ he said and his wings were massive and his shadow imposing. His form too much for human eyes to look upon, his voice too loud for human ears not to bleed to its song.

Castiel branded him, a large hand burnt on his skin where there were no other marks than a tattoo that had once meant _safety, precaution, brother_ and was now a mockery of its purpose. Castiel _gripped him tight and raised him from perdition_ like every day angels swooped down from heaven to cast salvation upon those undeserving.

Castiel asked _You don't think you deserve to be saved_? And Dean thought _No_. The infinite sadness in those stolen eyes bled him dry and his fury was his refuge. If this was heaven and salvation, then Dean belonged in the flames, because he saw no sense in choosing. Damn them all the sinners, damn them all the worthy, saved be Dean Winchester?

_What God is that_ Dean thought as he stared, frozen in horror and fury _What God is that, who lets a woman burn in her son's nursery? That lets monsters roam the shadows in human and inhuman guises? That lets heroes burn in hell to save another? What God is that, who lets people sacrifice everything and gives back nothing but grief? What God is that who lets my little brother descend to an abyss no angel could sweep him from, no man could reach?_

So he said 'Why'd you do it?' and Castiel gazed upon him and the faith in those eyes burnt through Dean like lava, terrifying in its knowledge of the end of days, in its wisdom and its play of light and shadow. Dean wanted to say _You didn't save me_ , but the proof is there, on his skin, and in the way Castiel gazes upon him with a compassion that has burnt out of Sammy's eyes. 

He wants to scream _Why didn't you save them?_ , he wants to cry _why me?_ , wants to break down and say he wasn't worth it, had never been worth it, could never hope to be deserving of what millions of others were not. He's killed, he's fucked, he's lied and deceived, he's cheated, he hasn't believed, he's stolen, he's lusted, he's envied, he's hated, he's sold himself, he's given everything for nothing, he's lost everything and was still losing. 

Castiel said _Because God commanded it_ and Dean, inside, was screaming. This was no God he believed in. This was no God he could believe in. 

Castiel gazed upon him and something in Dean, wanted. All of Dean, rebelled. 

Castiel listened, but Dean no longer knew what he was meant to pray for.


End file.
